Severe motivational difficulties

I really intended to get work done today. Honest, I did. But here's what I could work on, and why I absolutely can't do it =D:

1. Statistics - The prof hasn't even covered the material in lecture yet. Why should I have to read the book to figure out how to do the homework? I've already done the parts that I already knew how to do or could figure out how to do without much effort.

2. Plant Stress - This is ordinarily my most interesting class. But not this week. Right now we're focusing on signaling pathways and the stress response mechanism in plants. All cell biology/molecular biology type stuff. Really icky, in other words. Not interesting in the slightest. (Sorry Ann) Anyway, all I have to do for this class is read 2 papers by Thursday and think up 6-8 questions about each of them. Thank goodness I'm not in charge of leading this discussion! (I had to do it last week, about freezing stress. Much nicer. And the paper I had was actually pretty ecological. Even better!)

3. Invasion Biology - I've basically done the work for this class. I just had to read 2 papers. Both of which I'd read before, though I reread them this morning. The readings assigned for last week were also both papers I've already read. I guess this is an indication that I'm well read in the field of Invasion Biology! Go me! Although, I do have to lead discussion in this class on Friday. That shouldn't be too bad though. I'll just need to think up a list of good discussion questions. This is a good class for discussions. It's peopled with intelligent students all of whom are interested in invasions. Getting them to participate won't be difficult at all.

4. Stats/Modeling in Ecology Seminar - This class also had a couple papers for me to read by Wednesday, but I've already done it. Aside from that, I just need to find some papers for me to assign when I have to lead the discussion in a couple weeks. Yes, I need to get working on that, but you know how hard it is to do work that doesn't have an ominously looming deadline! At least I know what my topic is, and I've got a couple papers here to consider, I just need to read them. I had a class last year that covered my topic, so I might just slack off and reuse the papers I dug up when researching it last year. Ain't no shame in that.

5. NSF Proposal - And of course, I still need to work on this darn thing. I've actually finished a draft though! Now I just need to polish it so I can ambush professors to read over it for me. That won't take too long. I'll either do it today or tomorrow. There's really only one spot that I can think of that needs to be reworded. And it'd be good if I could make it shorter, but right now it sort of sneaks into the page limit...

And here are things I'd rather be doing (much more compelling than homework, for the most part):

1. Knitting - right now I'm working on a grocery bag. Actually, I've made one, and am working on a 2nd to use up the string. Unfortunately, I'm 2/3 of the way done with this one, and just about to run out of string, so knitting isn't really an option right now. I'm going to go to Sacramento to get more string this evening, and conveniently have dinner at In-n-out at the same time =D. Maybe get another shrimpie too. Poor Goliath didn't last a week. The grocery bag is funny. I went shopping with it once, and felt kind of like Mary Poppins. The thing is, it's really stretchy, so you can just keep putting more and more things in it, and it swallows them just fine.

2. Patching - Gotta mend a pair of pants. I sewed one patch on them this morning, but there are 2 holes still requiring attention. I don't want to be too zealous about patching up my pants though. I should spread out the joy of sewing...

3. Reading - Right now I'm reading The Lord of the Rings. Yes, of course I've read it before. But that was over 5 years ago. Actually, this is the 3rd time I've read it. The first was in 7th grade. Unfortunately, we were also reading The Hobbit at the same time in English. Since both books share characters, settings, and themes, reading them concurrently will only serve to cause confusion so I decided not to finish the trilogy at that time. I also have 6 books waiting to be read, and I'm anxious to get to them, so there's always motivation to do fun reading.

4. Snood - I regret to include this evil on the list. This game is so addictive, I had to banish it from my computer 4 years ago. Unfortunately, it made it's way back this summer. This is by no means as entertaining as the other 3 procrastinatory devices. But alas, it just compells you to play it. Hopefully I can break the yoke of addiction. I just banished it again! (I ejected the zip disk and deleted the shortcut on my desktop.) This worked 4 years ago. Lets hope I have the willpower to leave the disk in my drawer. I think I can manage.

Ok... This is a long pointless entry. I'll release you from it. I need to go try to make myself read about Calcium signalling and principal components analysis.